


Rain

by kerlin



Category: CSI
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-31
Updated: 2010-08-31
Packaged: 2017-10-11 09:07:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/110731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kerlin/pseuds/kerlin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"We were so alive."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rain

_Shelter me from this sky  
Dance with me one last time_

\- Tom McRae, "Sao Paulo Rain"

It wasn't supposed to end like this.

Part of his mind recognized the statement for the cliché it was, and lamented its use, but another part was arguing the unmistakable fact that clichés got to be clichés because they had a ring of truth.

Because it really, really wasn't supposed to end like this.

His mental stopwatch clicked to three minutes, his mind's eye saw epithelials and trace residue and blood spatter now riding the rushing stream of rainwater toward the gutter. His nerve endings registered the rain dripping down through his hair, across his face to wet his lips and dampen his beard, soaking through his jacket to run down his fingers in cold rivulets.

Mixing in with Sara's blood.

She moved slightly under his fingers, a hitch in breath, an attempt to talk, perhaps? No matter. The ripple of movement ended with a gurgling sound and a fresh spurt of warmth across his palm where it was pressed in tight to her side. The gesture was stunningly intimate, his fingers wrapped around her ribcage, the flat of his hand pressing down hard on the gaping hole where smooth skin had once covered what was now pouring out onto the street.

He would have liked to have felt that skin just once, when it was soft and warm and dry, not cold and clammy and stained with blood.

Her eyelids fluttered once, twice, finally opening for a split second. Brown eyes met blue and even now he told himself the moisture was just the rain. Her lips moved in a quiver, a smile, a frown, a ghost of some emotion. He found himself praying with all of his soul; not that her blood would stop flowing between his fingers, not that he had the last five minutes to relive, but that her lips would part and he would be able to see that gap between her teeth.

But then her eyes were closed again, and time lurched on at its normal speed, the rain falling and the officer screaming and the lights flashing, and Sara's life fading in front of him.

Someone was yelling in his ear, tugging at his arm, but he shrugged the someone away, keeping his gaze intent on her face, praying that her eyes would open, the rain would wash the blood away, and she would gift him with a smile and the words that promised everything would be all right.

And then it seemed like his prayers were answered, because her eyes opened and they stayed open, locked on his, and he waited hungrily for the rest.

But the rest was a flattening and a diminishing, a twist of her lips into a frown, and then the blood wasn't pushing against his fingers anymore as it struggled to escape her body.

Feeling the weight of every one of his too-many years, he curved himself, felt the cascade of water spill off his back and slant away. Kept bending until he covered her completely, kept the cold rain from her cold skin, his fingers still splayed against her side. It wasn't enough. It would never be enough again.

But he could at least do that.


End file.
